[KanedaFR :
Based on some previous issues with Minty, db's contacted me to clairy explain his goal, following a chat he had with a lucky UMDK's owner.
I think it is in sync with this forum's goal : share info and help each other.
Else I would have already deleted this post.

Please take it for what it is : "be careful with your awesome UMDK board" rather than "Minty did shit".

This post as not insult to what Minty did.

EDIT: fixed a overreacted comment]

Hi all,

I've been seeing random UMDK boards popping up everywhere, this is great stuff. However, all boards I've seen thus far have the cartridge connector board finished in HASL (Hot Air Surface Levelling) and without a bevelled edge. This is VERY wrong. Any PCB that is going to be used as a connector, or exposed to any kind human contact absolutely MUST be finished in gold-plating. Also, the bevelled edges (angled cuts on the pcb edge, similar to this http://thumbnails77.imagebam.com/18158/ ... 576305.jpg) are necessary to reduce strain and potential damage to your console's cartridge connector. Insertion force is greatly reduced when a cartridge has proper bevelled edges.

HASL finish is basically just a thin layer of regular solder applied on top the copper traces. Solder is soft and not mechanically feasible to be used as a repeat connector. With a HASL finish, you will see the contacts deteriorate and corrode rather quickly; exposing the underlying copper and damning your board to a copper-oxide hell.

There are two types of gold-plating: ENIG and hard gold-plating. ENIG is soft gold-plating and is not really good for mechanical contacts like a cartridge connector. For this reason, you absolutely MUST specify hard gold-plating (sometimes known as gold fingers) for the cartridge connector board. Look at any video game cartridge you have; they are ALL hard gold-plated.

Last edited by db-electronics on Tue Mar 21, 2017 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

....[KanedaFR : deleted (again) personal rants between db and Mighty. Please don't use SpritesMind like a fight club, else you're not welcome here, the BOTH of you]
....

As an idea: I made absolutely no profit on the UMDK manufacture - nothing - and in fact, it cost me money. It is very easy to sit around waiting for other people to do things and be active and then cast judgement and this is pretty much old-school Spritesmind all over.

MintyTheCat wrote:I dare say that now someone else has done the work he will be selling Bridge PCBs. this man does things only for profit.

I'm not sure that's true, but even if that were the case, it would be perfectly fine[1]. We all have different motivations.

Please, let's not reopen old disagreements. These arguments have already done irreparable harm to the project.

[1] Refer to the umdkv2-lx9 CERN OHL v1.2 licence, section 4.1: "The Licensee may manufacture or distribute Products always provided that...the Licensee provides to each recipient of such Products an easy means of accessing a copy of the Documentation...as set out in section 3".

MintyTheCat wrote: It is very easy to sit around waiting for other people to do things and be active and then cast judgement and this is pretty much old-school Spritesmind all over.

I edited db's first post to make it clear to everyone it's not a "judgement" of Minty's work.
If someone thinks other way, let me know, I'll ask db to apologize and,if needed, I'll delete this post

About the "old school Spritesmind", it's no longer here.
Apart 2 or 3 members, they all moved to another forum or another passion.
Why ? because of this kind of mood you feel on SpritesMind now : kindergarden (not related to newbie, but on low level fight).
So, like about the "judgement", if anyone think the Old-Guard (c)Minty of Spritesmind (or what it remains ) is troublesome, just LET - ME - KNOW.

For now, and unless I'm blind, i think it's just some psycho cat's desillusion..but be free to open my eyes.

Minthy made me hijack an interesting thread again so, please back to subject....
should I move it outside of UMDK's project ? because it's something to be aware if you made ANY custom cart ... no ?

That would be defamation, kaneda and I shall ask you to remove such comments. Your role as administrator/moderator is not to stress your own convictions here but rather to exercise control with due caution. You do not have the right to make any assumptions about my character.

Last edited by MintyTheCat on Wed Mar 29, 2017 8:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, these points should be raised for production-level carts (not just UMDK). db has raised issues (on other projects) with things like voltage levels, earthing, plating and other helpful tips to make the very best end product that's compatible with all consoles and will last for a very long time. I think we need this information somewhere central, cart manufacturing is on the rise and a few recent releases seem to have a few quirks that could have been avoided with open information.

However, UMDK is still in development, this isn't the first test batch and certainly won't be the last, which means a few things: 1) they need to be as cheap as possible - I'm hoping to buy into every revision to help with testing and improvements, and I don't want to starve myself to do death doing it, and 2) they'll be used for testing a few times, cataloguing all problems found and then they'll become expensive ornaments when the next revision is made. So for now, we should make sure these things are cheap and fast to test. Once it's "ready" we should take note of the various ways to produce these with an aim towards long-term durability.

Minty was careful to warn potential buyers that these are test products, they might (and they did) have problems, incompatibility issues and faults, and that's ok because the point of these runs is to improve the design.

BigEvilCorporation wrote:
Minty was careful to warn potential buyers that these are test products, they might (and they did) have problems, incompatibility issues and faults, and that's ok because the point of these runs is to improve the design.

My contention really boils down to members being inactive and not contributing. There have been a number of instances whereby the community could have helped but very little was achieved.

My hope was that UMDK would not be disregarded as it is a very useful tool to have for development. There is this ever "one-up manship" at play on this forum which ends up being short-sighted and leads to very little.
If db wants to support the community then by all means contribute to the project.